


Anamorphosis

by anonemone



Series: Palladium Protocol [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Not A Fix-It, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), will update character tags as characters appear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-08-13 04:09:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7961881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonemone/pseuds/anonemone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>FRIDAY told Rhodey that Tony Stark was dead, but he refused to believe that.</p><p>It still left one question, though: where the hell is Tony?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_The suit isn’t meant for the vacuum of space. He should be floating—no gravity here—but no, he’s falling and falling and he can’t breathe. He tries to ignore the burning in his lungs. The light of the reactor flickers, flickers—_

Tony, logically, knew that he wasn’t dying. He had the reactor taken out years ago. It wasn’t actually powering his heart, not anymore.

Try telling that to his brain, though.

“Fry, FRIDAY—my vitals.”

There was no reply, and first JARVIS, now FRIDAY—

No. FRIDAY was fine. Communications were down, then; they were designed to be one of the last systems to go in the case of reactor failure, which meant that the reactor was now completely depowered. Not for the first time, Tony regretted that he wasn’t able to finish design and fabrication of the Mark XLVI, which had lots of backup arc reactors all around the body. If he had, then Rhodey wouldn’t have fallen, and he would not have been stuck there alone with a depowered suit.

Oh God, he was dying. He was alone in a Siberian bunker in a dead metal suit with a _crushed arc reactor_ and he was _dying._

_Obie sneers down at him, and he can’t move. Obie reaches in, twists—_

Tony tried getting up to his hands and knees from lying down on his back, but the suit was too heavy. He clawed at the chest plate, he needed it _off_ , he can’t breathe, he needed out.

That did nothing, of course. It was stupid, anyway; his undersuit wasn’t going to hold up against the Siberian winter, not that being in a heat-conducting hunk of metal was any better in the long run oh God he needed to get it off get _out_ —

Somehow, his hands found the latches, small ones, hidden from anybody who don’t know exactly where they are, and the armor opens up. The cold Siberian air hit him full-force and—

_It’s cold. Strange voices wake Tony up. Three good soldiers were dead, killed in front of his eyes, Rhodey was probably dead too, everyone in the damn convoy was probably dead, and his chest felt like somebody had planted a bomb in it. He looks down and oh God is that a car battery and he screams—_

“Fry?”

Tony heard the whir of chopper blades and felt like he can breathe again. FRIDAY, his radiant, amazing girl FRIDAY, she was here and she was going to save him.

That quickly gave way to more panic, though. Because there were—voices. FRIDAY wouldn’t have called anyone; he hoped to God she didn’t send Rhodey, who was supposed to be—Oh God, _Rhodey_.

_The oil rig explodes and he reaches out but Pepper is falling and—_

He scrambled out of the armor, falling down just beside it. He had to get up, who knew who was coming—he refused to be taken again—no—

His addled brain couldn't match the words with a language, couldn't start to parse what all the voices were saying. 

Except for one statement, a statement that made his blood run cold—

“Hail HYDRA.”           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a more grounded, non-HYDRA, and even more heartbreaking (though it ends happy!) take on this, read [squireofgeekdom](http://archiveofourown.org/users/squireofgeekdom/pseuds/squireofgeekdom)'s _[When it's all worn off, where do you go?](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7933897)_. Seriously, it's a great fic; the Tony voice is spot on, and it explores Tony and Rhodey's relationship so well.


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha closed the cheap flip phone and dropped it.

She pushed herself off the shadowy ledge she was sitting on, landing perfectly on the phone and crushing it. Her occasional concession to the unnecessarily theatric was something she never really could shake, much to the dismay of her trainers in the Red Room. Thankfully, SHIELD was full of similar drama queens, so really, after a while, she fit right in.

Taking a roundabout path around the city back to her safehouse, she mulled over the conversation she just had with Rhodey over the phone.

A month of continuous correspondence and she still couldn’t get a clear read on him.

She trusted that finding Tony was his main priority. She also knew that Rhodey had the means to track her down, even with just his military contacts, but especially now that he had all of Tony’s resources freely at his disposal. But that didn’t mean that she wasn’t going to try her hardest to make it hard on him, at least while she still hasn’t gotten their teammates out of their imprisonment. She has been making regular calls and keeping him updated on what she has found so far (mostly nothing), as she promised, but has also been moving around, never making calls from the same place twice and trying to make sure that there was no discernable pattern to her locations. One wrong move could mean Rhodey getting to her and putting a stop to her plans.

She still didn’t know what exactly happened between Steve and Tony in Siberia, and how much Rhodey knew. If there was even more to it that just Steve leaving Tony behind, well, who knew what Rhodey could be planning? She knew he could be relentless, especially for Tony, and that was not something she or the others currently had the resources to go against.

It was in one of the bigger city streets that she realized she was being followed.

She rerouted to the tourist center of the city, full of shops and street peddlers and confused foreigners, where there was enough sensory input to confuse even a supersoldier. She spotted a good decoy in the crowd, a person of similar height, wearing similar colors, with hair just a few shades cooler than Natasha’s current cinnamon brown. She moved with the same general trajectory as the decoy, picking up speed along the way.

Then, she looped around, comes up behind her stalker, and places a hand on his shoulder.

“Holy _shit,_ Nat.”

Natasha smiled the smile that one smiles when they find a friend in the middle of a crowded place. It had taken Steve some time to get into the habit of swearing around her (something about keeping proper language around ladies), but he has most certainly grown into it by now.

She hooked her arm around Steve's, and started leading him on a path to her safehouse in a quieter part of town.  “What took you so long?”

“Sorry, I had to walk here. I still don’t understand why we couldn’t have met halfway.”

“I had shopping to do.” She pulled him to an understated mid-rise apartment building just a few neglectful years away from being run-down, with cracked yellowing paint and dirty windows. It wasn’t a lot, but the landlord was an old contact who had left behind the more violent parts of his old life, and while Natasha didn’t exactly _trust_ him, she did understand how he thinks, and she knew that he had some discretion.

After a three-floor climb, Natasha waved Steve into her unit.

She took off her leather jacket and abandoned it on the kitchen-slash-dining table, and saw Steve focus in on the blood spatters on the sleeve of her shirt, souvenirs of her unfruitful intel gathering run earlier that day. “I owed somebody a favor,” Natasha explained, although Steve didn’t look too satisfied with that. She ignored him. “I’m taking a shower.”

She retreated to her too-small bathroom. If it were Clint, he'd have hung around and taken that chance to catch up and compare notes. Steve, of course, gentleman he is, just asked through the closed door if he can prepare some food. Natasha grunted her assent, and then she heard the muffled thumps of him systematically going through her kitchen. He wasn’t going to find much--all she had were tasteless non-perishables, all canned food and MREs that she had stocked the place with when she acquired it.

“This was the best I can do, sorry,” Steve said when she emerged from her quick shower in a tank top and leggings and a towel around her shoulders.

Natasha took a seat and took a look at the heated tuna from the can, half-heartedly seasoned with some salt and pepper. It was going to be  bland as all hell, but still certainly better than anything Natasha herself could whip up, anyway. “Have you tried the local food? It’s very good.”

“Haven’t had the chance.”

“Let’s get some tomorrow, there’s a decent place a few streets over.” She started ploughing through the food, and it really wasn’t as bad as she expected. “You really left Barnes in cryo with King T’Challa?"

"It's what Bucky wanted."

"You sure you can trust the King? He wanted Barnes dead."

"He's a good man, and I have his word."

Natasha nodded, satisfied, and the conversation died back down until the only sound in the apartment was their chewing and the scrape of utensils on the plate.

Steve breaks the silence first. "The team's being kept in some underwater superprison."

Natasha nodded again. They’d only had the chance to talk once, a month ago, back before Steve left Wakanda. It wasn’t a secure line, a fact that was confirmed when Rhodey suddenly got hold of her soon after, so their conversation was limited. He told her that there was an incident in Siberia, but none of the details, and updated her on what happened in Wakanda. She told him about the RAFT. That intel was from Sharon, who of course avoided being implicated in the _misplacement_ of Steve and Sam's gear. She was one of the best, after all. She was incredible busy, though, because the task force assigned with the upkeep of the Accords was being worked overtime what with the entire mess, so Natasha knew she couldn't rely on her for more help aside from the occasional piece of information. Having a person on the inside was valuable, and they had to play their cards carefully to keep that advantage. Besides, Natasha didn't want to get her into more trouble.

"We need to break them out," Steve continued.

"Just like old times, huh," Natasha said, smiling internally at her own little joke. Heists and rescues (and rescues, really, were just heists for humans) were never really their thing; they definitely weren’t Steve’s. He was more of an apprehend the evildoers kind of guy.  She knew what Steve’s first op as Captain America was--rescue the 107th (or, really, Bucky). By himself. And he ended up exploding the whole HYDRA base they were being kept in.

The one time they _did_ pull a heist was for the EXO-7 suit a couple of years back. It was a simple enough op, but she had to coach Steve through a lot of it. Really, he made a terrible spy, though he can learn yet.

Steve's responding smile was tight, and Natasha decides that it was time to stop skirting around the issue. She looks Steve directly in the eye, a courtesy to let him know that she was _observing_ , and asked, "What exactly happened in Siberia?"

Steve evaded her gaze and took another bite of the bland tuna, chewing for a little too long.

"I deserve to know."

He finally looked back at her, and took a deep breath, as if preparing. "It was Zemo's plan all along--he framed Buck-- _God_ Natasha we walked right into it, it was a mess."

Natasha placed her hand, firmly but not unfriendly, on his shoulder. _Focus_.

"We figured out Bucky was framed in the UN. When we asked him what could have possibly been the reason, he said that there were five more Winter Soldiers in Siberia and we thought Zemo wanted to wake them up, use them for, well, _something_ , and we had to stop him. Tony followed us, and T'Challa followed _him,_ apparently, but then we got to the bunker and Zemo _killed_ them, Nat. He killed the Winter Soldiers. Instead, he--"

"He what?"

"He said--he wanted to tear the Avengers apart from the inside. He's Sokovian, and his entire family was killed when--and he blamed us. He wanted to break us." Steve paused,  breathed. "He showed us a video. December 19, 1991."

“The assassination,” Natasha breathed out in horrified realization.

Her word choice rankles Steve, she could tell, but that was what it was. It was what the Winter Soldiers had been created to do. It was what _she_ had been created to do. It was never their choice, no, but it was always their actions, always their hands. Long ago, she thought Steve would understand. He, too, was a creation. He was made into a weapon. Even if his actions during the war could be argued weren’t _tainted,_ his actions under HYDRA-operated SHIELD definitely were. None of them were innocent, and there was no use being anything but honest about it. Natasha knew how to play with the truth, but she had promised that she will always be truthful to herself.

Steve--he didn’t _lie_ , but he ran from the truth too often. Natasha had stopped doing that to herself long ago.

"Tony attacked Bucky and--he was going to kill him, Nat. I had to protect him. God, it all went to hell."

"And then?"

"And then T'Challa brought us and Zemo to Wakanda, and now Bucky's back under and here I am."

"And Tony? You just left him there?"

Steve’s silence was answer enough.

"That was why you were at the airport, weren’t you? You had to get to Siberia.”

Steve nodded.

“You should have told us. We could have helped you."

"Tony wouldn't have believed me, he--"

"I would have." Hell, she _did_ , even without knowing the full story.

Steve broke eye contact again. “I didn't want to put you in that position."

Natasha was familiar with the cold, the same way Steve and Barnes were, and so the icy rage that lanced through her chest was even, in some ways, comforting. She breathed it in, reveled in it for a moment, let it remind her where she was and where she _wasn’t_ , before distilling it and keeping it for a better time. She still remembered the last time she let her rage take control of her, and it resulted in her parting (not _last_ , she won’t allow it) words with a friend being bitter.

She couldn’t afford to let her guard down now. Instead, she just replied, flat and empty, “You didn’t have the right to decide that for me.”

Steve clenched his jaw, which didn’t help with Natasha’s desire to punch it.

There was more she could say, more she _wanted_ to say. She could have told him about what happened to Tony, promise to Rhodey be damned. She could have told him about how she was done being somebody else’s weapon. She could have told him about how close he was to sounding like the very sort of person he wanted to stop.

She sighed, stood up, and walked away.

She returned to her seat moments later, and the way Steve looked at her in surprise was simultaneously saddening and infuriating. She opened the laptop she went to get, and pulled up the data she had worked so hard to gather in the preceding weeks.

“So, for the RAFT breakout, here’s the plan…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine, etc etc.
> 
> Okay so this took a really long time, despite it having been already 70% written when I posted the last chapter, and I am extremely sorry. The next chapter is also, as of posting this, 70% written. Take of that what you will.


End file.
